Trending
1. The August Advantage: What Top Financial Advisors Do Before Everyone Else
The advisors who dominate the fall are not necessarily working harder through the summer. They are using the quiet to remove what no longer deserves a place in the business. August tells the truth about an advisory practice. Not because it is the busiest month. Usually, it is not. Clients are away. Team members take holidays. Meetings move. Decisions wait. The calendar loosens its grip. That is precisely why August matters. — Jeff Thorsteinson
2. Oil Is Rising. Why the U.S. Economy Is Better Positioned Than Most.
As the war in the Middle East escalates, markets are keenly focused on what higher oil prices might mean for consumer sentiment and spending, inflation and inflation expectations, and monetary policy (as we know, the Fed held rates steady at its July meeting, but higher oil prices is one reason Wall Street expects a quarter point hike at the central bank’s September meeting). — Tim Holland
3. The Biggest Challenges Advisors Face During a Transition
Change was in the air in 2025. More than 11,000 established advisors changed firms. This was up 16% from 2024, when 9,615 advisors moved, according to the Advisor Transition Report by Diamond Consultants cited by wealthmanagement.com. Switching firms is a high-stakes decision for any financial advisor. Some might find that more autonomy, better tools, more investment options and a stronger culture fit are worth the move. At the same time, a poorly managed transition can lead to a loss of business, regulatory scrutiny and lost traction. Here’s a look at each potential layer and how you can minimize friction and maximize results when making such a move. — Kevin Johannesen
4. NVIDIA To Become the Second-Largest U.S. Dividend Payer
NVIDIA’s quarterly earnings reports are usually marquee events for equity markets, and its first-quarter results announcement on May 20 was no different. In addition to reporting record revenue, strong profit margins, and triple-digit year-over-year increases in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and non-GAAP diluted earnings, it announced one of the greatest dividend growth stories equity markets have ever seen. The most valuable company in the world, and artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether, announced that it would immediately raise its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 to $0.25 per share of common stock, a 2,400% increase. With roughly 24 billion common equity shares outstanding, NVIDIA will be on track to pay $24 billion in cumulative dividends during its fiscal year, vaulting it into second place among the largest dividend payers in U.S. equity markets. — Brian Manby
5. Three Prompts To Get the Most Out of AI: A Guide for Financial Advisors
Most advisors treat AI like a search engine: ask one thing, get one answer, move on. The advisors winning right now are doing something different. They're handing AI their actual work and getting finished deliverables back. The shift happened when AI became capable enough to handle complex projects. You can now give it a messy, multi-step assignment with links, files, and context, and it works through it the way a junior analyst would if you gave them a few hours instead thirty seconds. It researches, drafts, checks its own work, and hands you something ready to use. For advisory firms, this changes the equation on prep work. You're already doing these three things manually. AI just made them possible at scale. — FMG
6. 12 Reasons Prospects Hire Another Advisor Instead Of You
Have you ever lost a highly qualified and interested prospect to a competing financial advisor? (If you answered "no," then you should know that you're lying to yourself…) Almost every advisor has lost a prospect to another advisor. Problem is, your prospects who choose another advisor over you never tell you why they decided to go with that advisor. In fact, you'll likely never hear from that prospect ever again. So, how do you prevent your prospects from hiring your competitors when you don't even know why they decided to pick them over you? — James Pollard
7. What Actually Makes a Great Financial Advisor?
In wealth management, success gets measured in numbers. Assets under management. Revenue growth. New clients. Market performance. Those metrics matter. They tell you a lot about the health and scale of a business. But after spending decades in this industry, and now running an organization built around identifying excellence across the profession, I'm more convinced than ever: the qualities that make someone a successful advisor aren't always the same qualities that make someone a great one. — Molly Bennard
8. How Meta Ads Generated 288 Retirement Appointments for One RIA
This financial advisor marketing case study breaks down how Clients Blackbox scaled a retirement planning RIA's Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) from zero to over $7,000 per day in ad spend in just 12 days — booking 288 qualified appointments at a $219 average cost per meeting. The eight-advisor hybrid RIA had seen its cost per appointment double from $250 to $500 after Meta's Andromeda update disrupted the financial services category, and had pulled back to seminars before testing paid Facebook ads one more time. — Alex Khassa
9. Agentic AI Could Rewrite Every Rule of Commerce
I was recently interviewed for a podcast about Agentic AI in payments and finance. Here’s how the interview went: You’ve been writing and speaking about agentic commerce for a while. When did it click for you that this wasn’t just another tech buzzword. What was the moment you thought, “this one is real”? The answer depends on whether you mean the idea, the research field or the term “Agentic AI.” They are three different things. — Chris Skinner
10. Today's Tech Boom Isn't the Dot-Com Bubble. Here's Why.
Today's tech sector trades at a 58% lower valuation than the dot-com peak while generating 82% higher profitability, suggesting outperformance has been anchored in earnings power, not speculation. However, concentration remains a vulnerability. The weight of the tech sector in the index stood at 19.2% in March 2000, but it has risen to more than 38% today. If growth expectations shift, valuations can contract rapidly regardless of profitability. This concentration matters because portfolio outcomes are increasingly dependent on a narrow set of winners. A meaningful pullback in tech valuations would have outsized impact on overall returns, making diversification across sectors and geographies a prudent consideration in 2026. — Lincoln Financial
11. Before You Buy the AI Dip, Read This First
The S&P 500 closed the week at 7,489.72, up 1.1%; however, that headline hides nearly everything that mattered. “Despite a hopeful bounce to end the month, it was a bloodbath for most assets. It was the Nasdaq’s worst July in 22 years, bonds’ biggest July yield spike since 2005, and oil’s biggest July jump in over 30 years.” – Zerohedge. While the S&P remains close to its all-time highs, the momentum factor fell 2.2%, and the semiconductor sector fell 4.2%. Conversely, the average stock, measured by the equal-weight index, added 0.7%, which is why an index can climb while its leadership breaks, and that is precisely what happened. The engine was at the long end of the curve. The 30-year Treasury closed Friday at 5.25%, up roughly 4 basis points on the day and the highest yield since 2007, with the 10-year pushing through 4.7%, its highest since January 2025. Both moved after oil jumped sharply higher amid the re-escalation in Iran, and the FOMC held the funds rate at 3.50%-3.75% for a fifth straight meeting. — Lance Roberts